Page 19 of Return of the Outback Billionaire

Not trying to honeymoon him at all.

She’d made him grin and wasn’t that a pretty sight? Her fingers itched for a camera even as she turned her back on him and bent to put her eye to the nearest camera and tripod. She wanted to play around with the zoom on this one. Heading back to her kit, she fished out a thin wire presser that would allow her to take a shot without pressing any buttons on the camera itself and creating movement she didn’t want.

‘You have a lot of gear.’

More than she needed, true. She’d once thought that taking the perfect shot was all about the gear, but experience had taught her differently. ‘I don’t need half of it. I have my favourite cameras and lenses and I know how to get the best out of them. Live and learn.’

She could feel him looking at her. The weight of his gaze skittered down her spine, but she refused to turn around. ‘I kind of do better if I think of life as a learning curve. Mistakes are part of it.’

She took a few shots, fine-tuned the set-up, and then hauled the picnic basket onto the bonnet next to him, fished out a ham sandwich and waited for the storm. It might not pass this way. She might have misjudged it.

But she didn’t think so.

Several minutes later Judah dug into the picnic basket too and she waited for some snide remark about her food choices.

Instead, he looked utterly lost for a split second before muttering, ‘All right, I am here for this,’ and digging in.

He ate as if he’d been underfed for years and she ate up that vulnerability in him because it made him less perfect in her eyes, more human.

And then the world turned amber and the storm clouds rolled in.

She got to work as he packed away the picnic, always aware of him but focused on capturing the landscape in front of her.

When he sauntered out in it, welcoming the rain that raced across the plain towards them, she photographed him. The strength in his silhouette and the acceptance of the storm as he stretched out his arms and received the opening lash of stinging rain. Violence. Renewal. Nothing was fixed, least of all him, but he was her focus. Judah Blake, killer and saviour, his hat in hand and his face tilted skywards. Vulnerable and mighty.

Back in this place that had built him.

It was a spur-of-the-moment thought that made her set her cameras to take continuous shots so she could join him, taking his hand and drawing him into a dance more elemental by far than the one they’d shared at the ball. They spun and they stomped and tears filled her eyes and she let them because they’d mingle with raindrops and wash away and who would know the difference?

‘You’re here,’ she yelled, as lightning lit the sky and thunder rumbled and the rain pelted against them. ‘I’m so glad you’re here.’

And then he pulled her towards him, kissed her, and Bridie’s careful, considered world exploded. When the debris cleared there was only rain and Judah, bringing her to life in ways she’d only ever dared to imagine.

Whatever he had to give, she could take it and it wasn’t because of some nebulous sense of obligation for all that he had done. She wanted him.

He was back where he belonged, and she wanted him and that was all.

With a ruthlessness born of necessity, she drew him in.

CHAPTER FOUR

JUDAH HAD NEVER spun out of control so fast or slaked his need with such ruthlessness as he did now. Any gentleness he’d ever owned was gone, washed clear away as he framed her face with his hands, the better to devour her.

Bridie’s hands were restless, trapped little fluttering sparrows at his chest, his waist, restless until she burrowed beneath his shirt and found skin.

He pulled her closer, his hardness impossible to conceal against her softness. His hands slid lower, lifting, positioning, unable to stop himself from thrusting against her.

Let me in.

She stilled. She tried to speak, or sigh, or maybe it was a protest, and that last thought was enough to douse him more thoroughly than any storm ever could. She didn’t want this.

She didn’t want him.

He wrenched his lips from hers and buried his face against her neck, nowhere near ready to let go of her and back away, but he had to.

‘I’m sorry,’ he grated.

‘Hm?’ She wove her fingers through his hair, keeping him there as she burrowed in closer.

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